Posted on 07/21/2006 5:34:00 AM PDT by Wolfie
Gateway to Nowhere?
The evidence that pot doesn't lead to heroin.
Earlier this month, professor Yasmin Hurd of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine released a study showing that rats exposed to the main ingredient in marijuana during their adolescence showed a greater sensitivity to heroin as adults. The wire lit up with articles announcing confirmation for the "gateway theory"the claim that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.
It's a theory that has long seemed to make intuitive sense, but remained unproven. The federal government's last National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conducted in 2004, counted about 97 million Americans who have tried marijuana, compared to 3 million who have tried heroin (166,000 had used it in the previous month). That's not much of a rush through the gateway. And a number of studies have demonstrated that your chances of becoming an addict are higher if addiction runs in your family, or if heroin is readily available in your community, or if you're a risk-taker. These factors can account for the total number of heroin addicts, which could make the gateway theory superfluous.
On close inspection, Hurd's research, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, doesn't show otherwise. For the most part, it's a blow to the gateway theory. To be sure, Hurd found that rats who got high on pot as adolescents used more heroin once they were addicted. But she found no evidence that they were more likely to become addicted than the rats in the control group who'd never been exposed to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuana's main ingredient.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I have no idea.
It could be the keeping marijuana illegal may result in less marijuana users which may result in less gateway heroin users.
Can't you do any better than textbook strawman arguments?
Certainly some of those would go on to Substance B? But you're claiming no increase.
Actually, your perpective about consistency is what dooms you to your failed and utterly preposterous philosophy of elitist authoritarianism. That also leads you to the bizarre obsession with this topic. And that's just for starters.
You want to get personal? Send me a freepmail and I'll tell you about yourself. Otherwise, you're just another of a long line of baiters who throw out that nonsense and cry to the mods when responded to.
I've never made that claim. As you have observered, there is no way to predict with any certainty. You also recognize that by criminalizing Substance A, you put people who are inclined to use it despite it's being illegal into a situation where Substance B is just as readily available to them, where that situation would not exist if Substance A was obtained through legal channels. This makes it more likely they will use Substance B, and will result in more people using it, and other substances that they might not have otherwise.
Overall I think we'd see a net reduction in people using harder drugs, and greater isolation of the remaining users and dealers of harder drugs. Anyone can predict a net increase by only considering the factors that might result in greater usage and disregarding those that would have the opposite affect, but I can't think of any good reason to engage in such an exercise.
That doesn't follow. Suppose some portion of the population is naturally predisposed to drug use. A decent percentage of this group will use pot. A smaller percentage will use heroin. If you pushed a magic button and entirely eliminated all pot, you would still have heroin users. In fact you would likely have more, because some who would have been satsified with pot will turn to heroin instead.
How is that relevant to anything? I'm sure someone who is a drug user, particularly a hard drug user, would first use a drug that is more mild. It's akin to saying that 99% of all people who rode a roller coaster road a merry-go-round first.
The issue isn't is it biologically a gateway... the fact is psychologically it is.. and there is no doubt about it.
A habitual pot smoker may be no more or less likely to become addicted to Heroine than someone who has never touched the stuff if they both smoke it.... but odds are that the liklihood of the pot smoker trying the heroine in the first place are significantly higher.
I know the flaming will begin, but case study after case study bares this out.
Presuming A and B are partial substitutes, if A were legalized (i.e. made cheaper), demand for A would increase and demand for B would decrease.
Wait, so according to you alcohol being legal has kept many alcohol users from being heroin addicts, most likely because they have a legal means of accquring their preferred product, but making pot legal would increase the number of pot users, and therefore would increase the possibility of the number of heroin users because.....why is this?
Perhaps not to you. But you may be right, because in order to get pot many users acquire contacts in the drug trade. Once they've done this, the relative cost of trying other drugs decreases. Under these circumstances, then the "gateway effect" is actually an argument for legalizing pot.
True.
It could be the keeping marijuana illegal may result in less marijuana users which may result in less gateway heroin users.
But if you think that the legality of marijuana has a bearing on the gateway effect, you'll have to admit that lowering the percentage of marijuana users that go on to try heroin would be more effective than lowering the number of marijuana users.
A presumed added benefit would be a change in law enforcement focus from marijuana to heroin or other "hard" drugs.
If you do not wish accept Slate as a source, then here's the study. Where do you think Slate went wrong here?
The study referenced in the above article cited four previous scientific studies that "supported the cannabis gateway hypothesis of cannabis as a steppingstone toward abuse of other drugs".
If it's a matter of the post user's addictive personality making it more likely for him to move on to another drug, then it's not clear that reducing post use would have any effect, since the addictive personality would remain.
That's silly ...even for you. Not to legalize is to continue the ban.
Nice catch. Let the squirming commence.
That higher likelihood can be entirely explained by the fact that those with an inclination to alter their mental states are both likelier to try pot and likelier to try other drugs. If that's what the "gateway effect" is ... so what?
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